Unclaimed Memories
by Kaprou
Summary: Peter Parker, Web of Shadows AU. This is condensed from a story arc in the Web of Shadows that tied together 2 years of adventuring for everybody in a temendous finale. Be patient, this is just Peter Parker's part. He will never be the same. (Complete)
1. Kravinoff Dreaming

The trim, athletic young man rapped his drumsticks on the kitchen table, then spattered some hits across the back of the chair, spinning and working his way across the dish drainer and countertop. He grinned as a staccato rattling rhythmed itself out of him and rolled across whatever was handy.

"Cut it out, Peter," called a voice from the bathroom. "It's not good for the furniture!"

"Sorry," he said, twirling the drumsticks like sixguns and sticking them in his pockets. He twirled them out again, up and down and around. "You ready to go?"

"If I'm not, you'll continue your destructive binge, am I right?" said the voice in the bathroom.

"Married for less than a month and you read me like a book," Peter grinned. "You're awesome, Mary Jane."

"Damn good thing I'm ready to go," she said, emerging from the bathroom. She was, in a word, sleek. Her dark red hair was back in a braid, she wore a single piece sleeveless dress that revealed her neck and shoulders. She shrugged a short jacket on with an arch look at Peter.

"By which I mean," he said, licking his lips, "you really are awesome."

"Not so bad yourself, handsome," she replied, looking him over. He wore a turtleneck, tweed jacket, jeans, loafers. His hair was slicked back, and his eyes were bright. "You ready to go to dinner and a movie?"

"I've looked forward to it all week," he grinned. "I've got a date with Mary Jane Parker." His grin stretched wider as he looked at the modest diamond that sparkled on her finger.

He offered her the crook of his elbow, and she took his arm. They left their apartment, headed down several flights of stairs, and strolled towards her car. The wind picked up, bitter and chilly. Peter stopped, alarmed, and sniffed as he glanced around.

"Just once," Mary Jane sighed, "could we go to a movie without the drama?"

"Not tonight," Peter murmured, his focus intense. "I smell blood." He moved to shield her, staring into the deep shadows by the hedge. Something stirred. A huge man loomed out of the shadow, took a tentative step towards them. Then the shadow dropped to his knees, wavering.

Peter darted forward in time to catch the big man as he tilted forward, falling. He turned him, lowered him to the sidewalk on his back.

"Kravinoff!" he gasped.

The man laying on the ground had sunken cheeks, eyes that had receded into hollows. His lips were pulled back from his teeth in a snarl of fear or pain, his tremendous form was wasted away. Breath left the shell of a man, and his head lolled to the side.

"Is he dead?" asked Mary Jane breathlessly.

"Not yet," Peter said, determined. "Call Strange," he said shortly. He scooped Kravinoff's huge, limp body up and darted back up the stairs.

"Come on, Kravinoff," Peter whispered. "Don't die on me now." He fumbled with the lock on the apartment, finally getting the key in and turned. Barging in, he lay Kravinoff on the living room floor.

"What did this to you?" he breathed as he saw the big man's condition.

**xXx**

Mary Jane answered the door quickly. "Thank God you've come," she said, stepping out of the way as the slim man in the red coat entered the apartment.

Peter was on his knees by Kravinoff, breathing into his mouth. Then he straightened, pushing on Kravinoff's chest. He glanced up at the doctor.

"He stopped breathing," Peter managed. He sat back, wearied. "Can you save him?"

Strange peered at the prone form for a long moment, then he nodded to himself. With a subtle gesture, he stabilized Kravinoff. The big man began breathing shallowly, his pulse sullen and slow.

"What's wrong with him, Strange?" Peter asked. Mary Jane brought him a glass of water, and he quickly drank it.

"He has suffered some tremendous shock," Strange said quietly, looking down at Kravinoff. He took a penlight from his coat and knelt over the sleeping man, flicking the beam of light into his pupils, examining him more tangibly.

"So what's the word?" Peter asked quietly.

"Something shocked him. Badly," Strange said. "Right now his mind burns with a single image, something he must pass on at all costs. It is keeping him alive, this need to share what he has learned. But… his mind. It is a ruin. He might recover, he might not. As it is, he cannot rest until the image has been passed on. This determination is keeping him alive, but if he does not rest he will die anyway."

"So…" Peter said, "what can we do?"

Strange sighed. "Kravinoff is very weak. Another shock might kill him. If I were to go into his mind, I could see the image that is driving him. However, if he died while I was in his mind, I would effectively die as well." Strange's eyes flicked up to meet Peter's watchfulness.

"Kravinoff chose me," Peter said slowly. "He found my apartment. Believe me," he added, "I owe at least this to him. The last time I saw him, he was hurt almost this bad. He had just fought Necra. Then he told me she was just the beginning, there was something bigger behind her. He left to find what it was."

"I wonder what he found," Strange mused, looking down at him.

"You can send me in, right?" Peter said, his voice even.

"I can," Strange murmured.

"So much for our date," Mary Jane said tightly. She sat on the couch, watching the proceedings, unaware of her white-knuckle grip on her bag.

Peter faced her. "It's okay," he said. "I'll be back."

"We should do this at my place," Strange said, subdued. "Better protection there. Just in case."

"Right," Peter said. "Just in case."

Strange swiftly stripped off his red coat and wrapped it around Kravinoff. The coat lifted him off the ground. Strange glanced around the room.

"How about I just meet you there," he said.

"Works for me," Peter agreed.

The two men left, and Mary Jane sighed as she picked up the television remote. The television flared to life, but she ignored it.

Her thoughts were elsewhere.

**xXx**

Peter was surprised when a blonde woman opened the door.

"Tandy," he said, surprised. "What are you doing here at Strange's place?"

"He asked for my help," she said simply, letting him into the house. She closed the door behind him. "I have some experience with dreams, and with helping people through them."

"I can use all the help I can get," Peter muttered. They went up the shadowed staircase, down the dim hallway to the impressive double doors at the end. Together, they entered Strange's Sanctum Sanctorum.

"Are you ready?" Strange asked seriously, his fingers steepled. Kravinoff lay in a chalk circle on the floor. Peter swallowed hard and nodded.

"Okay," he said. "Let's do this."

"I will connect you with Kravinoff's dream," Strange murmured. "Tandy will supply you with Light as you need it and as you can find it. When you are ready to awaken, she will lead you out."

Peter mutely nodded, then sleep stole over him and he knew no more of the waking world.

Glancing around, he found himself in a swelling confusion of jungle, desert, Strange's house. Mixed in were images of urban streets. A kaleidoscope of insanity twirled around him, fragmenting his senses with conflicting images.

"No!" he shouted, focusing. "Kravinoff! Where are you!"

As he looked around again, he saw a peculiar blood trail hanging in the air, droplets quivering as they drifted slightly. Bereft of gravity, they slowly spun in the air instead of leaving wet splats on the pavement.

"He's a hunter," Peter murmured to himself. "This is something he can understand. A blood trail." He set his jaw and followed the trail deeper into the nightmare.

He caught a glimpse of Kravinoff ducking behind a building, a skyscraper that sprouted vines and moss, growing out of the sand dunes. Firing a webline, Peter darted towards the figure, then swung. He glanced at his hands; saw the peculiar bulging muscles, the claws at his fingertips. He felt the darkstone all over him, and realized that in Kravinoff's dream he would be a monster.

One monster. Of many.

He skidded to a halt when he landed, and the shadows stirred.

Dozens. Dozens of monsters.

"Hoo boy," Peter said as the shadows began to leak monstrosity. "Time for plan b." He let his eyes close for a moment. "In my dreams, combat never works," he whispered. He felt a tingle, and looked down at his right hand. Drifting in the air around it was the faintest nimbus of Light.

"Rock on," he said with a grin. He relaxed, letting the Light into his dream image, then out through his outlined form. He was lost in the deep shine for time that could have been days, could have been seconds. When he was himself again, he was Peter Parker and not a monster. He stood on the frozen furrows of a field, a matted scattering of harvested corn stalks at his feet, the field stretching away interminably.

"No monsters," he murmured, looking around with a pleased smile. "So far so good." Set as the only interruption to a gently curving horizon, an old clapboard house hunched on the hill. Peter felt another presence, and turned to see a boy.

No more than ten years old, the boy stood watching him. He wore tough pants, no shirt; his black hair was a tousled mess, his eyes bright. In one hand he held a wood splitting hatchet. The hatchet and the boy's face and chest were bedewed with blood spatter. The boy watched him with intense interest.

"Hello," Peter said, squatting down. "Who are you?"

"I am Sergei," the boy said. "Can you feel it?"

Peter took a moment, let his senses play the landscape. There were no physical tells here, but his spider ghost was equally adept in the realm of dream and shadow. He felt the ribbon of dark energy woven through, under, around everything in this place. "I feel it," he replied. "Do you know where Kravinoff is?"

The boy nodded. "I must show you the way," he said seriously. He extended his hand to Peter. Peter took the boy's hand. Together, they walked back and forth in a peculiar pattern across the field, until Peter looked down to see he was standing on a road. The road led to the weathered house that brooded on the skyline.

"That place drew Kravinoff, and now he cannot escape," Sergei said. He shook his head. "I am afraid. I cannot go there. Better luck this time."

"I understand," Peter said, feeling the strange dislocation of a dream. "I will go after him."

The boy smiled shyly, then turned and vanished into the fabric of the dream. Peter turned his back on the endless field, and followed the road the boy had found for him.

As he passed a weathered and ancient sign, he stopped to look at it. The elements had long since scoured any useful information off the sign. It hung on short lengths of chain from a crooked post with a crosspiece. Peter reached out to stop its slight swinging, and he saw his hand was broad and strong. Glancing down, he realized he _was_ Kravinoff… with a strange twisting sensation he realized he was both in the past and the present simultaneously. He took a deep breath, feeling the deadness of the earth and the emptiness of the sky. He knew that the trail from Necra to the dark power at the bottom of it all had led him here. Something was ahead; something he half knew but was compelled to verify.

As he approached the ancient house, he felt the Light fading from him as he sank too deep in the hallucination for it to follow. He was close. He was very close. To something.

Looking down, he saw his own bootprints on the porch.

He followed his own tracks. Better luck this time…

Peter pushed the front door open; weather had warped the door so that it creaked and sagged on its hinges. It unevenly groaned as it swung open.

A fleshy pulse rolled through the sky and earth and house, and Peter reeled with a stab of sharp pain. He heard a whisper on the wind; "Hurry," it murmured in a voice very like Tandy's. Peter realized Kravinoff was dying in spite of Strange's efforts. He wondered how much strain his very presence here caused Kravinoff's ruptured psyche. Setting his jaw, he stepped into the dim house.

His boot prints led down the hall. Small drifts of dead leaves and mouse bones lined the hallway. He followed his prints, around to a small closet set under the stairs. He opened the closet, peered inside. There was no light and no dark, just a shadowless dull gleam to everything that rendered it surreal. Peter saw a small trap door at the back of the floor in the small closet. Kneeling, he wedged himself into the closet and managed to open the door. It creaked as he hefted it open. There was just enough room for his massy frame to squeeze through. He lowered his head first, glancing around in the dimness below.

Below was a staircase. He heard and eerie murmur hanging in the air below, almost as though it had been uttered once and now it drifted around like smoke, unable to find a way to disperse. He squeezed through the opening and dropped, taking a few uncertain steps down the stairs.

A man stood before him. Slowly, Peter edged around the man to look at his face. He gasped.

It was Kravinoff. Or, perhaps, as Kravinoff would look in another thirty years. His eyes were sunken, his cheeks hollow, his sanity shattered and in pieces in the haunted depths of his eyes. He was muttering in Russian, and Peter understood only the gist of the mindless repetition, and then only because he was in Kravinoff's dream.

_The lair of the beast,_ Kravinoff mouthed. _This is the lair of the beast._

"It's going to be alright," Peter said, disconcerted as he heard Kravinoff's voice. He took Kravinoff's blasted form by the shoulders, still awed by his huge arms and hands. "It's time for us to leave."

With that, there was a peculiar sense of suction, and Peter staggered slightly as Kravinoff merged two of his forms. Senseless, the big man slumped to the ground. Peter realized he had disabled the core of the hallucination.

Time to go.

He scooped Kravinoff up, and slipped up through the trapdoor lugging Kravinoff's body. He sprang out of the house as it began to twist slightly, and groan. Peter realized something dark was waking up in that house. Something disturbed. Something that he wanted to avoid at all costs. The building creaked, almost as though it was sniffing for him.

Peter felt a Light growing in the air before him, and he ran into it.

Kravinoff's eyes rolled half open and then closed, like an unconscious blink. He fell into a deep and natural sleep. Strange leaned back, the taut lines on his face attesting to the struggle he had undergone keeping Kravinoff alive through Peter's psychic surgery.

Tandy smiled down at Peter as his eyelids fluttered, then he opened his eyes in a daze. "I'm back," he whispered, relief flooding him. "Hot damn that man's head is a creepy place to tiptoe around."

"What did you discover?" Strange asked tersely. "What image was so critical to him?"

"Truth?" Peter said. "I have no idea. There was an old creepy house with a trapdoor leading down to some stairs. A beast was lairing there, it woke up as I was leaving with Kravinoff. There was some… some wacky stuff. I don't rightly understand it all myself," Peter said, trying to work out how to explain the haze of images that crowded in his memory like ghosts around prayer.

"Anything you can recall," Strange said, leaning back and steepling his fingers.

"I was met by a young Kravinoff," Peter said slowly. "I sort of became Kravinoff. There was this weird… we had to find our way in somehow. I don't know how to explain it. And then this creepy farmhouse, there was no road until we found the road, but nothing blocked line of sight as far as you could see." He shivered. "There was nothing to be afraid of. But… my hands are shaking." He looked down at them, watched them tremble slightly. He looked at Strange. "Whatever he found there, it blasted his mind. His instinct took over and carried him to safety. I've seen it myself," he added ruefully. "When he comes around we may be able to get better answers."

"I dare not wake him before he is ready to be awake," Strange said, eyeing Kravinoff. "We may not have the luxury of time on this. I will meditate on what you have told me."

"Glad to be of service," Peter nodded. "So… he'll be okay now, right?"

"He will," Strange nodded. "I will see to it."

Peter, Tandy, and Strange rose to their feet. Peter gave Tandy a big hug.

"You are so awesome," he said. "Thanks for the Light. You saved my life in there."

"Anytime," she replied with a winning smile. "By the way, Mary Jane is downstairs. She couldn't wait at home."

"Cool," Peter said. "You need anything else?" he asked quickly.

"You are free," Strange nodded. "Thank you for your help."

Peter grinned at him, then trotted out of the Sanctum, down the hall, the stairs, to the kitchen.

Mary Jane turned in her pacing and saw him. She ran to him and hugged him fiercely.

"Glad you're all in one piece," she said, her voice muffled in his shirt.

"No sweat," Peter lied. "Hey, the night is young. You still up for that movie?"

She pulled away from him, still gripping his shoulders, and she sniffled back her unshed tears. "You got it, bucko," she said. "After dinner. I'm hungry again."

"Great," Peter nodded. "Uh, nothing horror or action, okay?" he said uncomfortably. "Maybe a romantic comedy or something."

"What a perfect husband," Mary Jane said, her eyes bright and her voice unsteady. Peter smiled as she pulled him into another hug.


	2. The Man Behind the Curtain

**xXx**

Sweat poured down the blind man's face as he hefted another spadeful of earth. With a grunt, he tossed it on the pile of fresh-churned dirt. Then he stuck the shovel's point in the ground and leaned back, his breath coming in ragged gasps as he pointed his sweaty face towards the distant sun. A chilly breeze rippled across the shorn cornfields around them.

"The grave… finished," he said hoarsely. "I need to sit down."

"By all means," the classically beautiful woman next to him said, looking around. Her reddish blonde hair gleamed in the November sunlight. The blind man with her knew what she looked like; he had not been blind for very long. She looked over at the flattened fairground that was still wisping smoke from being destroyed the night before.

"Now my brother is gone," the blind man said, lowering himself to his knees by the grave. "I won't bury him. My daughter is dead," he said, touching the cold earth of the fresh grave with a trembling hand. "It is time to turn my attention to my father."

He turned to the woman that stood by him. "Not twenty miles from here stands an old abandoned building, it looks like an old farm house. It was an orphanage for this county. I grew up there with my brother. In 1921 my brother and I were six years old, and that's when we first met the Dark Lord. He began his experiments, tying siblings to his network. We weren't the first," he said, and he listened to the wind as it rippled across the fallow field. He flexed his hands on the crumbling soil. "It was miraculous that we survived. Only two of us out of ten in that particular batch."

"Are you ready to lead us there?" the woman asked.

"No," he said, slowly shaking his head. "The Dark Lord is more cunning than that. I can't see anymore, and without my sense of tracing the power to its root, or at least following the veiled road, I can't find the place. There are magic screens around it, screens that turn the eye away and confuse the step. Out in the cornfields, it's impossible to find it if you do not know precisely where to look. No one has come to the heart of Nebraska to seek out evil," he added with a grimace.

"Is it entirely impossible to get there?" Valeria asked.

"No," the blind man shrugged. "If you know someone who has found their way in, someone who can see, then that person can find their way in again. But I know of no successful interlopers."

A stepping disk flared, full of pale dark light, ringed in eldritch fire. A thin man in a red coat stepped out, accompanied by a goat-legged but otherwise attractive young sorceress.

"Perhaps I can shed light on the affair," the thin man said. "First things first. Scott, are you finished here?"

"Yes," the blind man said dully.

"Valeria, are you ready to go?" the thin man asked the woman who watched over him.

"Say the word," she nodded.

"Strange, he said something about someone finding their way in," the goat-legged sorceress said. "You don't mean to wake up Kravinoff, do you?"

"No need," Strange said, his eyes probing the horizon. "Kravinoff showed Peter Parker the way through the maze."

"Ah," the sorceress replied.

"Perhaps you could go recruit him, Illyana," Strange said. "The time is approaching. The confrontation will not be delayed much longer."

A stepping disk carried Illyana away.

"I feel the years," Scott murmured. "They swirl in my mind like leaves in an autumn wind, trapped inside me and whispering restlessly. My mind feels dull. I… will not be of much help."

"You don't know that," Strange murmured. "We cannot always tell what our role will be."

**xXx**

Peter answered the door, and blinked. Illyana smiled at him sweetly.

"Got a couple hours, Pete?" she said. "We're about to go tackle the big bad guy. Here's the catch. We can't find his lair without getting through a magic maze. Unless we have somebody who's been inside. And I think you won't be terribly surprised to find out this lair is a dilapidated farmhouse."

Peter heaved a sigh. "Great," he said. "I knew that one was gonna bite me. Look, I can go with you, but I gotta call MJ. Hang on." He let her in, and as she closed the door he picked up the cordless phone and punched in a number.

"Yes, Mary Jane please," he said. He waited for a half a minute, then smiled. "Hey there," he said. "Something's come up. Something serious. I'm going with Strange." He listened for a minute, and nodded. "I'll be as careful as I can. I should be back by the time you get home. Take care of stuff, I'll see ya. I love you," he added seriously. Then he disconnected and tossed the phone on the couch. He smiled sheepishly at Illyana.

"I kind of want those to be my last words to her," he said, "so any time I set out on one of these nutty missions I tell her I love her so, you know, in case I don't come back she has that as our last…" He shrugged. "Okay, let me get my mesh and we're outta here."

**xXx**

The assembly was quiet for a moment. Valeria, Scott, Peter, Illyana, and Strange stood around the scrying pool in Limbo. Greenery bloomed all around them, and the hintings of dawn were brushed across the deep blue sky.

Valeria wore leather jacket and pants and boots, Scott was dressed in jeans and a sweat shirt, Illyana wore a tunic and silver armor, Strange in slacks and a white shirt, his red coat over all, and Peter in mesh with his hood down.

"We are all keys," Strange said quietly. "The Dark Lord's stronghold is a puzzle box, and each of us is in a way a key to unlocking part of it. Are we ready to go?"

They nodded. Illyana opened the scry, and Peter stood next to her with his eyes half shut.

The scry turned and twisted as Peter focused and Illyana held the connection between them, her face screwed up in concentration. Then the scry settled on a farmhouse on the horizon, surrounded by fallow fields. Those looking at the image shivered slightly. It was wrong; the angles were all off, not a single right angle in the entire view. The house obeyed its own architectural rules now, and it seemed distressingly _aware._

The stepping disk flared, and deposited the five of them at the bottom of a short rise, a road at their feet leading up to the farmhouse. The sky was the color of gunmetal, the wind was cold and as markedly steady as an ocean current. A faint stink of ozone hung in the air, and it was a bit harder to breathe than it should have been. All the colors were subtly wrong. Fear rippled through them.

"Nothing is as it seems," Strange said guardedly. "Beware, here in the center of the web of shadows." He knelt, and sifted a handful of dirt. "The very earth here is dead," he murmured. "Undead energy overflows from the air itself." He stood, brushing his hands against each other. "This place. It is a half step away from Prime. Just far enough to evade my detection. There are no spirits of earth here."

Illyana was quivering as she looked around, and the cold was not wholly responsible. "Okay, let's do this and get out of here," she said, her jaw trembling almost enough to make her teeth chatter.

Tears squeezed out of Scott's useless eyes; memories flooded him, and he had not the strength to keep them at bay. He said nothing.

Peter pulled the hood down on his mesh, so he was entirely lost in the shadow. As he led the way, the group approached the house. He got to the porch.

_Nothing here is natural_, whispered the spider ghost in the back of Peter's mind. _This place is an abomination._

"We're going in," Peter murmured. He reached out and touched the door, having a strange dissonance with the last time he had been here, in the mind of his broken friend. Gently, he pushed the warped and weatherbeaten door open.

"Careful, Peter," Strange warned. "Illyana, with me. We'll watch over Scott. Valeria, check the place out. Peter, find the way further in."

Valeria and Peter disappeared into the house, and Scott dropped to his knees.

"Please," the blind man begged hoarsely. "I can go no further. I dare not go in there without any power. Let me stay here. I've done enough, for what I've become," Scott managed. "You can't protect me anyway, and if you fail you cannot imagine the horror of my fate." Strange exchanged a glance with Illyana. "Please," Scott said. "I insist." He flinched. "Peter has found the way further in," he whispered.

Valeria whirled through the house; she saw the spare kitchen with its long and cheerless table, she saw the closet where misbehaving children were locked until they saw the error of their ways. She saw the two dormitory rooms, cramped, three bunked beds lined up with lockers at the base as impersonal as a barracks. She saw the stains on the walls, the felt the creeping sensation of fear that even now hung in the haunted halls. There was nothing she could point to, nothing she could lay her hand on that infused the place with such a sense of intimidated servility or looming disaster, but nonetheless she felt her skin crawl and her heart thud dully in her chest as she moved through the abandoned rooms of what had once been an orphanage.

As she touched down at the base of the stairs, she saw Peter open an understairs closet.

"In here," he said, and she heard in his voice an echo of what she was feeling.

"I'll send the others in," she said. "Don't do anything rash."

Valeria reached the trio standing outside.

"Peter's found the way in, and I didn't run into any defenses," she said.

Strange and Illyana followed her, striding into the abandoned orphanage. Scott trailed behind.

They found Peter squatted over an open trapdoor. Wisps of an ancient stink wafted up on the cold current of air that came from the dank pit below.

Strange gestured, and a witchlight sprang from his palm. It floated down into the dankness, revealing a short drop to a root cellar. They climbed down, and the light drifted over to one of the walls. Peter followed it, and opened a walk-in freezer. At the back was a gaping tunnel that led into the bowels of the earth. They followed the witchlight as they walked down the tunnel; Peter stopped with a cold chill as he came to the top of the steps that led further down.

"This is where I ran into Kravinoff's image," Peter said. He took a deep breath. "Whatever's down there, it was enough to drive him insane."

"The question," Strange mused, "is whether Kravinoff escaped or whether he was released."

No one had anything to say to that. They followed the rough stone steps down through the earthen tunnel, lit only by the sorcerous light.

Dim light grew ahead of them. They reached the end of the stairs, and stepped out into an open cavern. Shaped into the walls of the cavern were shelves, and there were hundreds of screens and monitors set in the spacious cave. Dead pale light flowed from the monitors, flickering and dancing into deep shadow in the cave. At the far end was a dais, and upon the dais a throne fashioned from computerized technology and stone. Low slung monitors lit the figure on the throne from beneath, like hi tech footlights.

On the throne lounged a massive manlike creature. His eyes blazed ruby red, his face was too pale for mere greasepaint to emulate his pallor. His demeanor was almost petulant. Black rimed his nostrils and lips and eyes. He was dressed in black steel, or he was made of it; it was difficult to tell. Strips of the black material sprang from his shoulders and wove into the throne, into the dais, to the monitors and computers. He was smiling at them slightly.

"Welcome to my home," he said in a sibilant, slithering voice that instantly put them on edge. Behind them, a massive slab of tempered steel slid across the tunnel entrance, sealing them in the cave. The figure on the throne regarded them.

"I will leave when I please," he said, "but I would speak with the first ones in two hundred years to unravel my plans deeply enough to find one of my lairs. I am _most_ impressed."

Illyana and Peter glanced nervously at Strange. All of them felt the tremendous menace that flowed from the passive man on the dais, even though there was no overt threat or obvious reason to feel the creeping fear that seeped through their guts.

Strange knew why.

His jaw was set. He felt the evil of the creature before him, recognized the full stink that left only whiffs of itself at the back end of too many plots. This monster had worked himself into the background so thoroughly he was simply a part of the world.

"Let us speak awhile," the creature on the throne said with a sadistic smile.

**xXx**

"Okay, dis is stoopid," Remy growled as he kicked at the gravel on the shoulder of the two lane road. The five hooded and cowled ninja stood in the morning sunlight of the abandoned strip, their van parked behind them. All around there was nothing but road, fencing, and cornfields. "We been driving up and down dis stretch of road for close to twenty minute, not find a ting. Why we parking here?"

Elektra stood on the shoulder of the road, her fists planted on her hips, staring at the field intently. She sensed through her link with Illyana. "Here," she murmured. "Illyana is through here. Help me, Stick."

"Down that road?" Stick asked.

"Dere is no road," Remy snapped.

"Ah," Stick said. "A road that I can see that you can't. We're on the right track."

Without even meaning to, Illyana had led the ninja to the orphanage. They closed their eyes, followed Stick, and vanished into a cornfield.

Time passed uncounted, then Stick stopped. The others stopped as well, opening their eyes. A strange wind blew across them, steady and unceasing and chill. Stick turned to the others.

"This is what you were trained for," he said simply. "You may die here. This is the one I have prepared you to kill. Give it everything you have; if ever in your lives there was a time to hold nothing back, this is it. Do not mind dying; you may succeed where no one yet has. Are you with me?"

They nodded, and so did he. "Good," he said. "Let's go."


	3. A Weight of Secrets

**xXx**

"Who are you?" Strange asked.

The figure lounging on the throne chuckled. "I am Essex, if you must have a name. I am the infamous Dark Lord you've heard so much about. I sense each of you has a question on your heart. I will answer your questions," he said with a wicked smile that triggered every instinctive alarm his guests had. "I find that answering questions leads inevitably to more questions, but never to satisfaction. I count on it. I _thrive_ on questions. It is too soon to fight, I haven't had a good conversation in ages." He settled back on the throne with a content sigh. "You may begin, Strange."

"What are you trying to accomplish?" Strange asked.

"Ruling the world, as simple and mundane as that may be," Essex replied with a derisive curl of his lips. "Not as a figurehead or centralized figure myself, of course. From the shadows, as it has always been. Primus was going to be emperor of the world, long lived and powerful and free to move in sunlight. Instead he chooses to be a cripple and a beggar." Essex shrugged elaborately. Primus, Scott, flinched.

"We all have decisions to make. Alex was to make him stronger by opposing him, so Primus could destroy him or keep him around as a sharpening stone. But Primus couldn't even kill his brother," Essex said, shaking his head.

He smiled at Strange. "You're familiar with the method, I observed the Ancient One honing you with Mordo. Just as Mordo was furiously jealous and bitter, so too was Alex. However, you overcame Mordo. Scott lacked the skill and the nerve."

"Not exactly the same," Strange said, unsettled.

"No?" Essex replied, his face an amused question. "Have it your way."  
"Why?" Strange asked. "Why are you doing this? Love of chaos?"

"Oho," Essex chuckled. "I do not love chaos. It is merely a tool. No, when I am finished there will be order. In creating powerful people with no emotional cushions, releasing them into public life, the world is made to be more dangerous. Peter knows all about that." Essex smiled patronizingly at the spider ghost. "He's stopped many an interesting conflict before it could really get going. I needed monsters, lots of them, before I could rule the world."

"People will not let themselves be conquered by beasts," Valeria said clearly.

Essex chuckled, trying to be polite and not laugh in her face. "How charming," he said. "You are right, of course. To try to take people's rights from them, you must be ready to kill most of the people. But instead to strike at them _through_ their rights, to show them how dangerous it is to be free… why, once you've taught them the perils of freedom they will beg for walls and call it protection instead of oppression. Teach them the safety of confinement and they will stream into your lightless coffins for the living. Tell them they must allow one another to be free and they will beg to surrender their rights if only to restrain their more bold cousins." Essex's smile reeked of cruelty.

"So you make the world full of fear and then quell that fear," Strange prompted.

"Precisely," Essex nodded. "Time is on my side," he said. "Technology and paranoia are both improving all the time. I feel that in forty years or so everything will be primed if I use that time to insinuate my agents once more, rebuild all I have lost. When the time comes, I will be in readiness. This time, you lot and Stark and a handful of others blocked my every turn, for I moved too swiftly. No matter. I will vanish, and your children or grand children or great grand children will have to deal with me." He chuckled. "I have all the time in the world, and it is turning in my direction. I cannot lose. You can, at most, delay me for a few decades."

"I don't want to live in your world," Illyana snapped unsteadily.

"Hm," Essex murmured, distracted. "More guests to the party. All is still well." He turned his crimson gaze on Illyana. "You wish to know about your grandfather," he said as she visibly paled. He chuckled. "Very well. He was a lovely man, a master of monster making. He was Russian, chased out of his country by fearful peasants who learned the hard way what he was capable of. He found his way to the Nazis when the time was right, and he strove to bring about the end of the world in darkness and chill and flame. All those in his bloodline carry the taint of what he did to himself in his efforts. The Russians, bless their naive souls, thought they slew him."

Essex shook his head in mock sadness. "The KGB knew enough about what happened that when they were formed, they infected his entire bloodline with Tymaz Nine. The Second Directorate, the division in charge of internal affairs, made it a point to prime your family for assassination if need be. So if any of you followed in your grandfather's footsteps they'd have an easier time executing you." Essex watched her for a moment as she glanced nervously at Strange. Strange seemed oblivious.

"When Rasputin escaped, Belasco came looking for him," Essex continued, and Illyana stared into his eyes. She felt bloodless under his stare. Essex smiled. "Belasco and Rasputin had a deal, you see. Or maybe you don't see." He shrugged. "It doesn't matter. But the really fabulous question is, why did your Tymaz Nine activate? Was it truly an accident? Or did you do something to betray your potential? Were you being watched all those years, or did someone find you purposefully? I _do_ love questions."

Illyana was trembling, white to the lips, unwelcome ideas beginning to swirl in her mind half formed. "Stop it," she said breathlessly.

"Leave her alone," Peter said, stepping forward.

Essex moved his chill stare to Peter, who took half a step back. "Ah yes, Peter Parker. What is it you can't remember?" he murmured. "You were fourteen years old," he prompted. "August of ninety three. Such a sad funeral. Such a tormented lad. Do you know why you are driven to be a hero?" Essex asked as he leaned forward in his throne, his fingers interlaced. His smile lodged itself in Peter's nightmares as he struggled against the unearthing of the secret Essex prodded.

"Stop it," Peter said. "Shut up." Rage sang in his blood, but it was not his rage; the spider ghost desperately threw itself against a door in the back of his mind that had been shut for a long, long time. Cold fear trickled in Peter's blood.

_No more don't want to hear this don't want to talk about this no more _dithered the spider ghost in the back of Peter's mind, like the tuneless hum of the wind through cables.

"It was an accident," Essex said, tasting each word before saying it. He leaned back in his throne. "Uncle Ben, another argument, you had gone off without telling anyone and he wanted answers. Wanted obedience. You… pushed… him. Harder than you meant to. Harder than you knew you could. The old man flew back," Essex said, his eyes glittering as the door in the back of Peter's mind came off its hinges and he saw memories that were his that he did not own, bundled in mental web cocoons. One peeled open.

Peter's eyes stared as he saw the old man in his stupid windbreaker, flying back with a speed too great for a fragile old form to withstand; the brick wall, that sound, that sound that made it real, as bone snapped in its meat, slamming off the immobile wall.

"You killed your uncle," Essex purred, "the closest thing you ever had to a father. In a fit of rage. And Peter Parker could not bear it. So he retreated, and the spider ghost did what must be done. Beat the old man's head in with a pipe. Took his wallet. And let Peter Parker forget, exonerated."

Peter swooned on his feet as he felt the memories thud into his mind; in prying open ancient cocoons he found the tiny skeletons of memories the spider ghost had long since hidden where he would never, ever find them. Hot liquid shame splashed through him, leaving his knees weak and his tongue foul-tasting; he wanted to die. He wanted Essex to be lying. But the truth blazed, a glowing iron searing a brand on his mind of one simple action he would never be able to take back. Peter stumbled as he thought of Aunt May; how could he face her again?

"Questions," Essex said, snuggling back so his steel rasped on his throne. "I love questions and their answers and the questions beneath the answers. Don't you?"

Illyana blinked, feeling a flash of the flurry of ninja above, entering the house. She glanced at Strange, who looked bemused. She let her astral form drift just slightly out of the back of her head, like a runner leading off a base.

Her surroundings rippled and coursed with undead energies, smearing across her astral form. Strange too was just out of his form, close enough to snap back in with the foretaste of a thought. He glanced over at Illyana.

"Can you see his escapes?" Strange's astral form murmured. Illyana looked around the room again, and saw that each of the black silky ribbons that sprang from the shoulders of Essex's outfit was tied into an escape route. The entire room was like a sieve, and he was fully equipped to escape a hundred ways.

"What do we do?" Illyana said.

"We wait for the ninja," Strange replied. "Then we try to trap him here and do battle. Better to die here than to allow him to pick us off at his leisure, which he'll do if we hurt him badly enough to be worthy of his notice."

Essex chuckled and snapped his pale fingers, so both Strange and Illyana dropped fully into their bodies.

"As it must, our conversation ends with regrets," Essex sighed. "So many secrets, and we're just scratching the surface. I know everything about all of you. It's so… so _satisfying_ having a little chat with you in person; sometimes I forget that today is the first time we have met in person. But alas, everyone is here now, so it's time to start our little battle." His smile spread like a stain across his pallid face.

"Valeria," Strange said tersely. "Get the door."

With a wrenching snapping boom, the huge steel door ripped out of place and whooshed up into the air in the middle of the cavern, bourn aloft by a slim woman with her fingers embedded in the slab. Shadows flitted behind him. They scattered into the room as Essex rose from his throne.

The shortest ninja bowed to Strange. _We know the shadow and the dark,_ he said in the Silent Speech. _Use us._

Meanwhile, Valeria flung the steel slab at Essex. It pounded into him and bounced, awkwardly tumbling through the air trailing shattered glass from the monitors at Essex's station. Valeria was startled to see him standing unaffected. She charged down and unloaded a hit on him, zipping with incredible speed to add momentum to the train wreck she unleashed on the pale man.

His jaw whipped to the side as her fist slammed it, but he was unmoved. Three of his tendrils slithered out from his arms and punched into her, slicing easily through her flesh. She let out a shaky gasp as her vitality flowed into the dark and pale creature before her.

Essex felt his eyes grow large. "Wondrous," he breathed as her energy flowed into him.

Strange bowed his head, reaching out, resonating with the ninja. He focused through Stick, and he felt his mystic might spread across the shadows by that ninja like a paper towel over holes in a sieve; then the others, and finally Blade, Blade who knew the shadows, who was part shadow himself. Blade. Strange hardened himself to what must be done, then he touched Blade's energy to the pulsing energy web of the place.

As Blade screamed, raw power flowing into him, Illyana sprang at Essex.

"Ashia Faltine!" she invoked, lashing with her hands. Refined flickering fire rushed from her, splitting apart and bursting as Essex glanced her way. He chuckled, and black blade ribbons like the ones in Valeria punched out of computer equipment by Illyana; one of them rebounded from her mystic soul armor, the other slid in between her hip and ribs. She went very pale, gasping as she doubled over in exquisite searing pain.

"Now you," Stick murmured. He had dragged Scott with him, and he grasped him. Touched his chi meridians.

With a hoarse shout, Scott was plugged in. Scott became Primus. His eyes began crisping his eyelids here, in the heart of the web of shadows. He could not keep his eyes closed.

The blast tore across Essex and punched deep into the opposite wall. Essex spun away, startled.

"Goodbye," he said with a wicked grin. "Be seeing you."

He did not vanish. His eyes widened in alarm.

Strange dropped to one knee with the strain of holding each escape route separately and guardedly in his mind, feeling his sanity starting to creak under the strain. "Now," he whispered, for the ninja instinctively knew his plan as he tied them together with the shadowmagics that underlay the undeath of the lair.

Under his mask, Stick smiled.

Valeria felt a touch on her mind, and Strange gave her the plan full formed before he focused the whole energy of his sorcerous might on sealing Essex in the room. Valeria tore free, zipped across the cavern, swept up the steel plate, and whooped a war cry as she slashed through the air at Essex. Another blast from Primus tore him, bursting some of the steel he wore and revealing pale charred flesh beneath. Then Valeria slammed into him from behind, lifting him in the air, the vast steel door like a catcher's mitt as it was dented in a crease in the center. Valeria tucked herself, ready for the pain.

As Primus unloaded his fierce rage into Essex, the steel sprayed out from the hit, molten with the energies that blazed at it with the fury of the surface of the sun. In that blast were a hundred thousand missed sunrises, the laughter of a lover and a child, the warmth of a brother who was an ally against a cold world. All things that were gone, all things that had vanished into the web of shadows and fed this glutted thing at its center.

Valeria felt the plate giving as she pushed against insubstantial air to hold it against the blast, pain streaking her muscles.

The ribbons that held Essex to the earth and to his escapes whipped in the wind the heated steel gave off, twirled under the force of Primus's onslaught. They held, for they were more than physical material. Blade tumbled beneath Essex and swept his sword; he was one with the network, he was an aspect of the shadows of this place, and he bade them part beneath his razored blade.

Essex's scream was audible over the sound and fury of the blast that shoved him into the molten steel. He twisted clear, shimmering with heat and glowing with superheated metal. Springing from the plate and out the side of the blast, he managed to get clear and he landed gracelessly, rolling and popping up. His boots were intact, and his belt, fragments of his pants. His arms were streaked with cooling steel, his face a blasted horror as he gasped; ribbon fragments dangled and stuck out of his back. He was not recognizable.

Strange held nothing back in keeping the room sealed; he was not aware of what was happening, so fierce was his determination that this thing should not escape.

With a whisper of cloth, Stick tumbled up to Essex and touched him, here; there— He left himself too open, so eager was he to succeed. Essex plunged a hand into his torso, tearing out his heart in an effortless gesture. The old man stumbled back, legs suddenly stupid. As the small ninja collapsed in a heap of cloth and meat, his students closed in.

Primus fell back, howling as Essex was very nearly disconnected from the network and excess power surged into him.

Blade went airborne, and as he dropped he rammed his sword through Essex. The pale creature looked at him for a moment, face fixed in a snarl.

"Thank you," he whispered. Essex snatched Blade before the ninja could escape. Primus regained his feet, his head quivering with the energies it barely contained. Essex closed his eyes, and Blade knew he had half a second to earn his life. Not trying to strike Essex, he twisted and focused, and managed to slip clear of that deadly grip. He flung himself to the side, a bare fraction of a second in time.

The blast that tore from Primus burst the blind man's eyes, tore the skin of his face, seared strips of energy from his skin, and roared through Essex. The stone behind Essex was shattered, melted, thrown away as Essex bore the full brunt of the blast and was riven, disintegrated.

Just like that, the center of the web of shadows was plucked loose, and the strands began to drift and float as their tautness and purpose evaporated. Primus keeled over, smoking, flame flickering on his charred clothing.

For a moment, everything hung in space; deafened and shocked and unbalanced, everyone in the room simply tried to remember to breathe.

Then the cavern trembled, thudded. "It's merging with Prime again!" Strange shouted. "Everyone out!"

Faced with a clear need for action, Peter sprang forward. He scooped up Illyana's heavily bleeding body and glanced around. Valeria had swept the still-steaming Primus into her arms, the four ninja darted for the exit under their own power. So he turned and bounded towards the exit, scooping up Strange and whirling up the violently shaking stairs, his spider senses finding him footing and propelling him upwards inexorably.

He shot up through the trapdoor with Valeria on his heels, and as they madly propelled themselves out the front door and away from the house, ninja burst through the windows and bounded from the porch.

The ninja slid over by Strange as the entire world began to fall apart, and with a gesture he whipped a protection around them. Time made no sense, motion made no sense, then it was over. The protection faded, and Strange looked around.

A fitful breeze washed over them as they lay on the ground in a cornfield, a dozen yards from the road. They saw that the farmhouse had collapsed into a small crater, burying the chamber beneath.

"D-did we do it?" Illyana asked, her jaw trembling and her face pale. A trickle of blood slid down her cheek from the corner of her mouth. Valeria dropped to her knees, gently laying Primus down. His whole body steamed in the chilly air. The ninja stood impassive.

Strange looked over at her. "We stopped him," Strange said. He shook his head. "I think he was slain."

"This place still feels haunted," Peter murmured.

"Always will," Strange said, closing his bloodshot eyes. "It _is_ haunted. Who knows how many thousands, millions of lives have had their energy drawn here."

"I've paid my penance," Scott said in a quavering voice. "Let me die," he begged.

Strange touched his shoulder, sensed his life and his energy and his wounds. "No," he said simply. "You will live." He eyed the blind man with the bloody sockets and the torn face. "There is good before you in your life," Strange said quietly. "Even if you can't see it."

"I'll fly him to New York," Valeria said, exhaustion in her voice. "I'll bring him to the Sanctum."

Strange nodded. "How is your wound?"

"I've had worse," she shrugged. The razored ribbons of dark energy had left slits in her body that still leaked slightly. "Give me some time and some sunlight and I'll be fine. They might scar, though."

"Where did the ninja go?" Peter said suddenly, looking around.

"Hopefully the same place we'll go, once I catch my breath," Illyana managed. "Home."

**xXx**

Peter stood in his apartment. He held the mesh in his hands. Quietly, he folded it—

Such anger in the old man's eyes, his feeble hands grabbing Peter's shoulders—

Peter flinched. He deliberately threw the disintegrating mesh in the trash can, his eyes haunted.

"We gotta talk," he said to the spider ghost. "About what we hide from me and what we don't hide from me. Because that's not funny. That's not okay."

_What would you have said to Aunt May if I had not handled it?_

"That's my problem, not yours," Peter said, his voice quaking with anger and fear and disgust and other emotions he could not name. A chill rippled through his bones as he realized he had no answer for the spider ghost's question.

_Your lies are more convincing when you believe them._

"So now I think I'm a hero, I think I've got my life pretty balanced. Are you just letting me keep that impression in my mind to? Am I nothing more than camouflage? Was Kravinoff right all along?" Peter didn't shy away in time as the idea occurred to him that perhaps he wasn't using the spider ghost. Perhaps he wasn't as dominant as he thought he was.

"Anything else you're not telling me?" Peter asked, his curiosity hindered by the deep fear there might be.

The spider ghost was silent, and Peter twitched with a ripple of horror.

"Questions and answers and questions," he whispered to himself.

Peter thought of Mary Jane. Then he decided to carry the burden of his secret alone.


End file.
